You started your cleaning business to find freedom, right?
But somewhere along the way, you became a glorified HR manager. Instead of finding new clients, you’re drowning in tax compliance.
For our UK friends, it’s the PAYE nightmare—National Insurance, holiday accruals, and pension auto-enrolment. For our US friends, it’s the W-2 trap—FICA taxes, withholding requirements, and workers’ comp audits.
In 2026, the “traditional” way of hiring full-time staff is becoming the slow, expensive way.
There is a leaner, more motivated, and infinitely more scalable alternative: Profit Sharing with Subcontractors (1099s).
The Employee Trap
When you hire employees, you take on all the risk.
- Fixed Costs: If a client cancels, you often still have to pay your staff.
- Performance Gap: An employee gets paid the same hourly rate whether they scrub for their life or just wipe the surface.
- Admin Heavy: You are paying for their time, not their results.
The Solution: Percentage-Based Profit Sharing
Imagine flipping the script. Instead of employees, you build a network of trusted self-employed partners.
You don’t pay them an hourly wage; you split the profit of the job.
This is where modern software changes the game. Our system features a dedicated Percentage Paytype. You simply assign a contractor to a job, set their rate (e.g., 60% or 70%), and the system automatically calculates their cut based on the job total.
“But… How Do I Know They Are Good Enough?”
This is the big fear. Without a strict employment interview process, how do you vet a self-employed cleaner?
We solved this with built-in Training Modules with Advanced Scoring.
Before a contractor ever steps foot in a client’s home, you can assign them specific training modules directly within the software. They must watch the content and pass a test with a score you set.
- Automated Vetting: If they don’t meet the pass mark, they don’t get the jobs.
- Standardization: Ensure every contractor knows exactly how you expect the job to be done, maintaining your brand standards without micromanagement.
- Fit for the Job: You get concrete data proving a cleaner is fit for the role before you assign them a single shift.
The “Hands-Off” Workflow: From Booking to Invoice
The true power of this model comes when you combine it with our AI Booking Bot.
Imagine a customer visits your site at 10 PM. Here is exactly what happens without you lifting a finger:
- AI Booking: Our AI Booking Bot chats with the customer, quotes the price, and secures the booking instantly.
- Auto-Allocation: The system looks at your subcontractors’ profiles. It checks their specific coverage areas (the zip codes or postcodes they chose to cover) and their availability.
- Instant Assignment: The job is automatically allocated to the right local cleaner. They get a notification, accept the job, and it’s in their calendar.
- Auto-Invoicing: Once the job is done, the invoice is generated and sent automatically.
You have gone from a stranger landing on your website to a paid invoice and a paid contractor—completely fully automated.
Ensuring Quality on Every Shift
Once they are working, our platform makes this model scalable by automating supervision. When your subcontractor finishes a job, two critical things happen automatically:
1. Before & After Photos Your cleaner uploads photos directly to the job card to prove the condition of the home before they started and the sparkling results when they finished.
2. Signed Task Lists It’s not enough to say “I cleaned the kitchen.” Your cleaner must check off specific items on a digital task list and physically sign off on the job.
The Magic Part: All of this—the photos and the signed task list—is instantly sent to your Customer’s Portal. Your client gets a push notification, sees the proof of work, and pays the invoice.
The Perfect Software for 2026
By combining Training Modules for vetting, AI Automation for booking and allocation, and Accountability Features for quality control, you have the complete toolkit.
You didn’t have to chase the cleaner. You didn’t have to email the client. The system handled the trust.
Ready to ditch the payroll spreadsheet and start scaling?